Vandal Posted January 22, 2009 Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 Here are the updated logo image packs for the January 2009 XM programming changes as well as some siginifcant improvements. Several people has sent me requests for information about sending donations. My paypal is vandal@racinginc.com. This is not a requirement as I will never charge money for these logo updates nor make conditions regarding their use. Changes/Improvements: - The problem with semi-transparent pixels appearing black or very dark on the large Z series logos has been fixed and these logos now appear in optimal quality as was originally intended. This is a very noticable improvment, particularly with logos that have black edges and/or small text. Technical details are below. Logos for the D/N/F series and the small Z series logos were not affected by this problem. - All category names have been updated in the image table to reflect the new category names. - There are now category images for all categories including the Siruis Dog logo for the "Best of Sirius" category. The Christian cross image now appears for both the "Christian" and "Religion" categories (these are all Christian stations anyways so I don't know why XM bothers with having two categories). The "Pop" category uses the jukebox logo from the obsolete "Decades" category and "More Music" uses the speaker image from the obsolete "Hits" category. - Logos are now present for new/returning channels: Boneyard, The Bridge, xl BackSpin, and The Strobe. - XM has changed to Westwood One's traffic service to provide the traffic channels which has resulted in changes to all traffic channel names. New traffic logos have been created to address this. I was not able %100 match the font Pioneer used on their logos but it is quite close. The traffic light image Pioneer uses comes from the old 2004 XM channel guide. A tedious search of the web successfully turned up a PDF of this old channel guide from which I was able to extract this image in high quality to use on the new logos. - Channel 143, sometimes called the XM Sports Guide, now has an icon. This name of this channel is subject to change which can prevent the logo from appearing. Right now the name "Sports Nation" seems to used most of the time so I have set that as the name in the image table. - Fox Business channel is currenly off the air due to some ongoing contractual dispute with XM. The logo and image table entry are still present so that a logo will be displayed in the event this channel should resume airing provided the station ID does not change. - CNN Headline news was renamed to HLN and the new channel logo is now present. - XM corrected the channel name of "FAMILYTALK" to "Family Talk". The image table has been updated to reflect this so the logo will appear for this channel. - The logo for Holly and a Holiday category logo are present in the event either one of these becomes active again. Installing: - You will need to know how to modify the media for your particular AVIC series. See the stickied posts in the hacks/mod forum related to your unit for details. - Locate the folder containing the XMCAT, XMDAT, XMLPS, and XMDPS directory. On the Z series this the AV subdirectory of the SDAT volume. On the F series this was reported to be MyFlashDisk/DATA/XM. On the D/N series these folders are in the root directory of the 2 map DVDs. - As always when doing such updates on the Z and F series be sure to make backups of your XMCAT, XMDAT, XMLPS, and XMDPS directories. - Simply copy the files in the pack over any existing files for each directory (XMCAT, XMDAT, XMLPS, and XMDPS). First up is Z series. These have been fully tested on a Z3. Technical details quality problem with the large Z series logos: The quality problem occurred because the large Z logos use black (RGB 0,0,0) to indicate a pixel is completely transparent and all the logos files have the logo images placed on a pure black background. This is a terrible choice when dealing with 32-bit alpha channel images. Pixels in 32-bit alpha channel images with an alpha value of less than 255 are semi transparent and when such images are placed on top of another color, the semi transparent pixels blend with the background color into a final opaque color that is no longer semi-transparent. The actual Z series AV screen background on which logos appear is primarily white on top with a gradually darkening graient on the bottom. When the large Z series logo is generated by placing the 32-bit alpha image logo on top of a black background all the semi-transparent pixels become blended to that black background. This results in all semi-transparent pixels appearing much darker that they otherwise would be had they been placed on the intended white background. This effectively ruins the true appearance of the image. The solution to this is to recreate the actual Z series white background and use it to convert all the semi transparent pixels in the logo to the opaque color they would become had they been placed on the correct background in the first place. A study of the old Pioneer images reveal that is also the solution used by Pioneer to address this. Why Pioneer designed things this way is anyones guess. THIS UPDATE HAS BEEN REMOVED. THE NEWER UPDATE IS HERE: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23129&start=0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Vandal Posted January 22, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 22, 2009 I am unable to upload the F and D/N series pack because I'm being told that I have reached my maximum upload quota limit. I sent a PM to moderator to release me from the limit. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jchiodo Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 Thank you Vandal, you've been a great help to many of us. I hope you get released from the limit as I have an F series:) I tried to do this myself a few days ago, I got them all mapped out except I am not getting Boneyard to show up correctly. I beleive it should be named "DPS053.bmp" since it's at the same channel that AC/DC used to be at. I did that but I still have the "DPSNOT.bmp" icon when I tune to Boneyard. If you can't upload, any hints? I have everything mapped out to a spreadsheet and not sure what I did wrong. Hopefully I can pay forward the help you've provided me. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Vandal Posted January 25, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 Thank you Vandal, you've been a great help to many of us. I hope you get released from the limit as I have an F series:) I tried to do this myself a few days ago, I got them all mapped out except I am not getting Boneyard to show up correctly. I beleive it should be named "DPS053.bmp" since it's at the same channel that AC/DC used to be at. I did that but I still have the "DPSNOT.bmp" icon when I tune to Boneyard. If you can't upload, any hints? I have everything mapped out to a spreadsheet and not sure what I did wrong. Hopefully I can pay forward the help you've provided me. The station ID is 53 for Boneyard but it's not going to work unless the IMAGETBL.DAT file entry is changed accordingly. The string needs to be changed form "AC/DC Radio" to "Boneyard" and the length byte set to 8. The message thread for the November 2008 release has details about this file. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jchiodo Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 I thought it might be something in the DAT file. Unfortunately I've tried to open it with a couple different programs and hd no luck, probably getting a lttle over my head there anyway so just as well, I know enough to get myself in trouble but not enough to get out of it . Oh well, once again thanks for all your help. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jchiodo Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 An idea just popped into my head, can the IMAGETBL.DAT for the Z series be used with the F series? My guess is that it can't unless the only difference between the Z and F is image attributes and if the IMAGETBL.DAT does not specify attributes or placement of the icon on the screen. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
TimsterNJ Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 Great Job!!! Works awesome on my Z1 with the Z3 upgrade. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
garrettoomey Posted January 25, 2009 Report Share Posted January 25, 2009 Vandal, As always, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!! It works great for the Z series. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
tjc005 Posted January 27, 2009 Report Share Posted January 27, 2009 hate to be a pest, but any luck in getting the upload limit lifted? anxiously awaiting an update for the f series Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Vandal Posted January 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2009 hate to be a pest, but any luck in getting the upload limit lifted? anxiously awaiting an update for the f series Hang on...I have send the updates to Garret Toomey who will post them shortly. I still haven't heard anything from back from the moderator, PaisanNYC. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Vandal Posted January 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2009 An idea just popped into my head, can the IMAGETBL.DAT for the Z series be used with the F series? My guess is that it can't unless the only difference between the Z and F is image attributes and if the IMAGETBL.DAT does not specify attributes or placement of the icon on the screen. Yes you can copy it...with this update the IMAGETBL.DAT files are now completely identical in the packs for all the AVIC models. In the prior release I had not yet resolved if the category names were display names for a particular AVIC model or names that were used to match against XM broadcast names like the channels. To avoid breaking anything I didn't modify the categories in the IMAGETBL.DAT file I had for each AVIC model. I now know that the category names are indeed used for matching XM broadcast category names and must match in order for a category logo to appear. If you want to try editing the IMAGETBL.DAT manually, you'll need to use a binary file editor like WinHex. This works fine for minor things like channel name changes. Anything more complex and it becomes messy. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jchiodo Posted January 27, 2009 Report Share Posted January 27, 2009 Vandal, You are a credit to this forum. I hope you get your limit upgraded. Your uploads are benificial to the members and that should be what it's all about. If I'm not asking too much, could you tell me what program you use to edit the imagetbl.dat. If you don't want to say, no worries. Thanks Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jchiodo Posted January 27, 2009 Report Share Posted January 27, 2009 Damn, message to self, read the whole message. Sorry. On the other hand, I do use the search button Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Vandal Posted January 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2009 Trying this again...here is the D/N series update. THIS UPDATE HAS BEEN REMOVED. THE NEWER UPDATE IS HERE: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23129&start=0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Vandal Posted January 27, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2009 The size of the F series pack is causing problems with posting so I had to break it into 2 parts. Here is the first part. THIS UPDATE HAS BEEN REMOVED. THE NEWER UPDATE IS HERE: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23129&start=0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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